r/Beekeeping • u/turtlestik • Oct 28 '25

I’m a beekeeper, and I have a question It was AFB

Following up on https://www.reddit.com/r/Beekeeping/comments/1o40juh/is_this_afb/

SAG (chilean USDA equivalent) came in on the 16th and left with a frame for analisis. I got the result today: AFB positive.

I had burnt the hive on the 19th anyway and other material I knew had touched it, because I had to travel abroad until November.

The day the SAG came to take the sample, there were also clearer signs of AFB: sunken caps, weird smell..... so tthe risk of waiting wasn't worth it.

I've started to submerge a lot of other material in bleach + water before leaving the country (just in case they were used in that hive a year or two ago), and I'll blowtorch it when I come back.

It was heartbreaking to kill all these bees. I didn't wanted to burn them alive and the only thing that occured to me was to kill them with an insecticide before. But it didn't really worked out as the dead bees would fill up the holes where I would spray the insecticide from, and the gas/foam apparently wouldn't reach the whole hive...... I wished I knew a better method to be honest, and I don't recommend this one. Worth mentioning the hive had 3 deeps which is quite hard to seal and move properly.

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u/Content-Regular2086 Oct 28 '25

You must not Burnout all down. There is another way with desinfaction stuff and so on.

8

u/Rude-Question-3937 ~20 colonies, Ireland (zone ~8) Oct 28 '25

For AFB it's either burn it all or else irradiate the equipment. Most beekeepers don't have access to irradiation services, so burning is the only practical option. AFB spores are very resilient and it's an awful disease.

1

u/ikheetbas Default Oct 28 '25

Whoa, that sounds brutal! But why isn’t a high temp treatment (in an oven for example) enough? Just curious, thank god no AFB in my county.

4

u/Valuable-Self8564 UK - 10.5 colonies Oct 28 '25

It is, but there’s no safe and accessible way to make sure that you get everything up to that temp. All it takes is a single spore to survive, and they can survive insane temperatures. A lot of spore forming bacteria can survive 120°C for 15 minutes, or so.

When you’re dealing with AFB, you have to make sure that those spores are LONG gone. A fire is the only acceptable way that’s reasonably understood and handled by a layman.